There are a lot of new cops and detectives running around Thursday nights this fall. Charlie’s Angels has been reimagined; Lost‘s brilliant Michael Emerson is a cryptic billionaire who tries to prevent crimes from ever happening; and Maria Bello steps into Helen Mirren’s shoes in the remake of her police drama, Prime Suspect. Additionally, we have yet another Odd Couple-style comedy, a coven of teenage witches, and my vote for worst new sitcom of the season.

At Tubular HQ, we will be watching The Vampire Diaries, Community, Parks and Recreation, Person of Interest, The Secret Circle, The Office (out of obligation), It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, and giving Prime Suspect a chance. But not Whitney. Never Whitney.

We will be blogging The Vampire Diaries,The Secret Circle and X Factor. Is there anything else you think we should blog? (Person of Interest, maybe?) What will you be watching?

Yes, it’s another remake of the classic 70s jiggle fest. Listen. This is exactly what it looks like it is going to be. Three gorgeous women run around kicking bad guys in the face while solving crimes or somesuch. Remakes can be a tricky business: either they are colossal failures in the vein of Bionic Woman or Knight Rider or they can be surprising successes like Hawaii Five-0 or Battlestar Galactica. If I were a betting woman, I’d go with the former rather than the latter, but I’ll be happy to be proven wrong.

As if a plane crash at the end of last season wasn’t disastery enough, the season premiere has a giant sinkhole opening up in the middle of Seattle. Yep, giant sinkhole. That succinctly sums up my feelings about this show.

I don’t know, I guess the titular “private practice” was closed down last season? Does this mean everyone is off to join an HMO now? SEXY. Benjamin Bratt joins the cast this season, but more importantly, so does A.J. Langer. LONG LIVE RAYANNE!

Yet another Odd Couple comedy about an uptight etiquette columnist and his unlikely friendship with an old high school acquaintance. The supporting cast is very promising, and includes comedy vets Dave Foley, Rhys Darby and Mary Lynn Rajskub. And a couple of episodes have been directed by Fred Savage, who has a surprisingly deft touch with comedies, having directed episodes of Party Down, It’s Always Sunny and Modern Family. So, it has the pedigree, will it bring the funnies? Or will it all be penis jokes?

You had me at Michael Emerson and J.J. Abrams. One of the series I’m most looking forward to, thanks to Michael Emerson’s return to television doing the enigmatic genius thing again. This time Emerson plays a billionaire who has developed a computer program that can predict crimes before they happen. He teams up with handsome Jim Caviezel, a former CIA agent, to try to prevent the crimes from taking place. And, as I mentioned, it’s a J.J. Abrams project. So. Excited.

Stefan’s gone bad, Klaus is making trouble with werewolves, Jeremy is seeing dead people, Caroline and Tyler are dealing with their forbidden love and Elena is putting herself in mortal danger. So, same ol’ same ol’ in Mystic Falls.

(The canceled-too-soon) Life Unexpected‘s adorable Britt Robertson moves to a new town and discovers that she’s a witch in this new series. Listen, this is no more unrealistic than this blond child being the daughter of these two brunettiest brutnettes.

I honestly have no idea what differentiates this new singing competition (because we needed another singing competition) from American Idol, circa 2006, other than the fact that there’s no Randy Jackson, and old people can compete. What’s that? Groups can also compete? And the judges serve as mentors to the competitors? Kinda (exactly) like The Voice? How novel.

So, Bones is pregnant with Booth’s baby, which I suppose answers that “did they or didn’t they” question once and for all. And thanks to Emily Deschanel’s real-life pregnancy, which facilitated this entire story line in the first place, the season will be shortened to only 13 episodes.

Season 3 is about the price that you pay when you figure out that you love a group of people. That’s it in a nutshell. It’s about the high cost of valuing people other than yourself, and that’s the path that Jeff has been on. The third chapter for him is going to be the toughest of all. When you love people, their pain is your pain. Nobody likes having to deal with hassles more than Jeff Winger, and nobody’s going to have to deal with more this year.

Will Leslie run for office or continue her romance with Ben? WHY CAN’T SHE HAVE BOTH? In other news, Patricia Clarkson has been cast as the terrifying Tammy #1, which is great and everything, but I’m still swooning over having met Ron Swanson and Tammy #2.

Michael Scott is long gone, and the office is in need of a new boss. James Spader will be back as Robert California, but not as Michael’s replacement. No, California has more ambition than that, and has, in fact, replaced Kathy Bates as CEO of Sabre. Other things you can expect from the season: Pam’s pregnant again, we’ll be seeing more of the workers’ families, and lots of television writers will wring their hands over whether or not the show should have ended with Michael’s departure. (Or even earlier, frankly.)

Oof. This. As mentioned previously, this is this season’s second network sitcom from Whitney Cummings. Why? WHY? I honestly don’t understand what this woman has over the network heads so as convince them to give her all the shows. While I hear 2 Broke Girls isn’t terrible, I’m here to tell you, friends, Whitney is. I could spend 5oo words explaining why I disliked this sitcom so much, but I’ll just point out that aside from it being a traditional multi-camera, laugh-track sitcom on a night filled with single-camera, no-irritating-laugh-track sitcoms, Whitney tries too hard to be raunchy, is completely unoriginal and thinks its audience is too stupid to understand its very simple jokes. Also, quit flapping your hands around, Whitney. It doesn’t make your “jokes” any funnier, it just makes me want to turn off the television. Bah.

Let me begin by saying that I am not a cop show kind of girl. I strongly dislike most procedurals of any stripe: police, medical, legal, whathaveyou, in part because I find them repetitive and predictable. That said, this remake of the British cop series starring Maria Bello, surprised me with its emotional intensity and grittiness. What makes this series different from other cop shows is that its focus is not on the crime of the week, but rather on the development of the characters. And don’t let the promos for this series fool you: it is not the funny, light-hearted romp with a sassy cop at the lead that NBC would have you believe. Maria Bello’s Det. Jane Timoney is tough, and often times unlikable, and she is working within a department that resents her very presence simply because of her gender. It’s a very grown-up, heavy show, and it will be interesting to see if audiences are willing to embrace it despite its prickliness.

9 Responses

I’m really looking forward to Person of Interest and … that’s about it for new shows on Thursday. I’ll give Prime Suspect a chance if the buzz is good after a couple of episodes but I have zero, ZERO interest in Whitney Cummings (I agree T, what does she have over the network heads?!?!) or the Other Dillon brother. I’ll be watching what I guess is the results night edition of X Factor and the NBC sitcoms (sans Whitney). Re: the Charlie’s Angels reboot, I think we should count ourselves lucky with the goodness that is Hawaii Five-O and call it a day (I mean, does Charlie’s Angels even shoot in Hawaii OR have any LOST alums?). I’ll be covering all of the Person of Interest action this fall at onmydvr.blogspt.com!

It goes without saying that I will be watching Person Of Interest. In addtion to X-Factor,Community,Prime Suspect,Parks & Rec, & I might give Whitney a look see to confirm how bad it is. I’m sure it will only take one viewing.

The “X-Factor” is nothing like “The Sing-Off”, which is exclusively about a cappella singing groups. I think you instead meant to compare “X-Factor” to the “The Voice”, even though Simon Cowell created the UK version of “X-Factor” way back in 2004, 6 years before the Dutch version of “The Voice” started in 2010.

Interesting that there is no mention of PBS shows for the night. Not surprising since everything on this ‘British’ night are re-runs and then Chanel 8 has the audacity to announce after or before or between the shows; “Look what we are bringing you Brits, you should be grateful (as if they think British viewers are stupid) and should send us money so we can continue to patronise you with out of date material”.

I’m looking forward to The Mentalist, that is if the producers have finally put the ‘red john’ idiocy to bed.